Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) by Alice Bello

followed him out
the front doors and to his shiny red sports car—a Barracuda… and
one of his sisters sitting in the passenger seat. Stiffly he handed
her the drink, which she immediately started to suck
down.
    He turned and glared at me, and I
shrugged my shoulders.
    Oops.
    I turned back to the girls. They had
already grabbed our bags of goodies and we headed out the doors to
park our rumps at one of the little round metal tables with
matching metal umbrellas over them. We made it outside just in time
to wave goodbye to Raphael and his sister, and then to burst into
even more laughter when Raphael shook his head and gunned his shiny
sports car out of the parking lot.
    Now that was worth all the trouble this
day had wrought.
    Then something occurred to me. What if
I couldn’t find a date for the party?
    After “Sprinkles” it might be kind of
hard to get him to do anything for me.
    And what about more zucchini bread? Or
the banana nut bread he was baking for tomorrow?
    Drat, drat, double drat.
     
    ***
     
    Bette and Darla insisted we take a
detour and make a quick stop at the Yanni-Fell Mall, right off the
Route 88 expressway. They said I needed some nylons and sexy
panties (I said I had plenty of panties, and they crooned in
chorus, “Yeah, we saw!”) and some “natural looking
cosmetics.
    Since Bette’s last foray into “making
me up” I wasn’t at all gung ho at the prospect. But Darla had said
she’d apply the makeup. I wasn’t sure she even knew how to use make
up. The teenaged beauty queen never wore any… didn’t need
any.
    The mall was packed; all those who
didn’t want to melt from the heat were out at the mall. I didn’t
care if my central air didn’t work, I’d rather be at home. We went
in the west entrance, by the movie theater. It was the least packed
parking lot, seeing as matinees weren’t all that popular on a
weekday.
    Bette and Darla took off at a manic
pace—I guess the thrill of so many shopping potentials gave them a
boost of adrenaline. Me, I barely kept up. Thank god Victoria’s
Secret was so close to that entrance, or I might’ve pulled
something keeping up.
    I’d never been in a Victoria’s Secret
store before. I didn’t know what I had expected, but what I got was
this: perfume and body washes displayed in front, on the back
walls, on the counters, in the front windows, on the registers, and
hanging from the sales racks. Oh, and there were flimsy little silk
and velvet and lace doohickeys suspended from tiny little plastic
hangers on those sales racks.
    I blinked a few times before I realized
it was all lingerie. Every stinking bit off it was sexy
barely-there teddies, barely there undies, almost nonexistent bras,
and itty-bitty lace garter belts and… even less there
thongs…
    Oh, and toward the back were some super
short silk and lace robes that didn’t really cover anything up. But
I guess if you were going to put on a little show for whoever it
was you were buying the miniscule outfit for, you’d want some kind
of opening act.
    Lord almighty, I was so never going to
buy any of this stuff. I was ready to die from embarrassment just
standing there.
    “ Hope!” Bette called out
over the racks of lace doilies. She waved a hand at me to catch up.
They were back by one of the checkout counters. I gulped and looked
around. The place was teeming with shoppers… and not all of them
were women. There were about a half dozen red faced men angling
uncomfortably through the racks of stripper wear.
    I moved stiffly through the crowd to
the back where Bette and Darla stood staring down at what was in
the glass countered case.
    “ There are a lot of men in
here,” I whispered to Bette.
    “ Yeah, they’re a bunch of
dopes,” Bette chortled.
    Darla giggled.
    “ What do you mean?” I
said.
    She looked up and around at the
scattered men. “These men don’t get it. You don’t buy a woman
lingerie as a present. You let a woman buy her own.”
    “ Yep,” Darla intoned.